A Great Australian Blight

Our holiday to Nth Queensland was a success. We arrived in Townsville on time, late on a Monday afternoon, picked up our hire car and followed the GPS to find our motel, the City Central. The lady in the hire car booth couldn't find a paper road map so she gave us a GPS, which normally would cost $10 per day, for no charge. I had declined the GPS with the charge, when ordering the car.

The motel was the cheapest I could find on the net but the room wasn't too bad. It was on the second story of about eight, but the windows wouldn't open so the air conditioning unit was required to escape feeling locked in a stuffy cell. Then we had to endure the whirring noise I so loathe with aircon. I reckon the the motel that night would have been lucky to have had 5% occupancy.

We went out for dinner. The streets were deserted and traffic sparse. We had a couple of pots in a pub sportsbar and watched 'Deal, No Deal' on a big screen. The restaurant was next door. We were two of six patrons and there were many of empty tables. By this time I'd twigged that Monday night is pretty quiet in Townsville.

We got to 'Percy Springs' the next day before lunch. I enjoyed the novelty of the GPS, having used one for the first time the previous day. It wasn't really necessary, we just had to find the road to Charters Towers, stay on it till we hit the town, keep straight till we passed Centenary Park then turn right on the road to Hughenden, go about 15 km then turn left on a dirt road signposted 'Percy Springs'. Another 15km through 3 gates, keep going till the road stopped at the house. Dave had given me directions on the phone before we left Gembrook. 'Percy Springs' didn't come up on the GPS anyway.

Dave was out doing something with cattle. Jodie, whom we'd not met before, greeted us warmly and showed us around the house and where we'd sleep. The house was the original Charters Towers fire station, built in the 1880's and sold to the owners of 'Percy Springs' in the 1970's. It was a timber building on tall stumps. The new owners built in the lower section to make it a two story house. In 2003 the two creeks, on either side of the house, dry usually except after rain, had a peak flood and four feet of water went through the lower section. The occupants moved out and didn't come back. When the current owners took over the house was derelict and home for a multitude of rat's, mice, bats and snakes. They didn't think it was habitable but when Dave and Jodie took the job as caretakers of the 28,000 acre property they started cleaning up. It is now bright and airy and freshly painted featuring much of the original timber inside. Three Pointcettia trees for shade and Dave's thriving new fruit trees give a lush tropical feel in the garden.

Dave, looking strong and healthy and a little more thick set than when I last saw him, came home on his quadbike for lunch of homemade sausages cooked over a Gidgee wood fire. Jodie's home made bread and salad was the perfect foil, rounded off by pumpkin cake.

There was no shortage of pumpkin, about 100 of varoius shapes, sizes and colours were sitting on an old tank stand at the back of the house. Dave explained over lunch that he grew six and half kms of pumkins and melons last season. Where he'd pushed over small trees with a tractor in order to build new fences, he later pushed the fallen scrub into mounds which contained a lot more top soil than otherwise would be in one place. After burning off the timber a lot of ash was left with the soil and into these mounds as he got about on the quad bike he planted melon and pumkin seeds, trying to anticipate the rainfall. It came last January and February and nearly all his seeds grew.

Dave admits he's got a bit a thing for growing pumpkins and melons, an eccentricity let's call it. He reckons the country around there could well be better suited for that purpose and fruit trees than raising cattle. He would have ended up with truckloads of them if the wild pigs hadn't eaten most of the melons and the cattle most of the pumkins when the owners wanted cattle moved in to where they were growing."What could I say?" he said. "It's their property and their cattle."

He still managed to harvest some 600 pumpkins. He took 250 in with him to the Jehovah's Kingdom Hall one week and gave them to the brothers and sisters of his faith. I'll think of Dave next summer out on his rounds spreading pumpkin and melon seeds.

After lunch Dave suggested we have a look at the river so with Dave leading on one quad bike and Lib and I following on another, off we went. They were 600cc Yamahas. It took about half an hour through the scrubby country on well worn tracks and through numerous gates and dry creek beds to reach the main rd to Hughenden which we crossed, shortly after coming to a creek with water in it. There was a car parked there and some people lying on the bank of a water hole. There were the ashes from fires and tin cans and rubbish lying around. Dave explained this was a popular picnic spot for people from ChartersTowers and said what a pity it was they had to leave their rubbish behind.

We crossed this creek carefully at a crossing through about a foot of water and came to a rocky place with a cliff on one side of a large waterhole about 200 metres long. We were still on 'Percy Springs'. This waterhole, probably permanently with water Dave said, filled up when the Burdekin River flooded and was very deep. We parked the bikes on solid rock on the other side to the cliff and walked around looking at the amazing rock formations and picking up interesting stones which were of a broad range of colours. I would imagine this would be a gemstone haven for enthusiasts. Alas, even here there were empty drink cans.

From there we went the Burdekin River and rode along the sand banks for some kms. The river was flowing probably 5-10 metres wide mostly, which you could see would stretch to hundreds of metres when flooding. Tee tree and redgums growing thirty feet above the water were bent almost horizontal by previous floods. It staggered the imagination, thinking of that massive amount of water that must tear along at flood time. Enough to fill Melbourne's reservoirs to capacity in a matter of days I'd suspect.

That evening we had roast venison, a buck Dave had shot somewhere not far away when a keen hunting mate had visited not long ago. We talked about the bower bird's nest we came across, with the collection of shells and bottle tops and silver paper at both the back and front entrances and in the bower itself, the red roos and grass wallabies we'd seen, the native orchids and plums, the ducks, cockies. There was more pumkin cake, and reminiscing.

We left for the trip back to Townsville and Magnetic Island the next day loaded up with bread, containers of frozen soup(beef and bean, and pumpkin) passionfruit, big yellow ones that lasted our whole week on the Island, and pumpkin cake. The visit to 'Percy Springs' will long be in our memory. Magnetic Island wasn't bad either.

So why 'The Great Australian Blight'.  I walked up to the town last Saturday morning, picking up more than a dozen empty aluminium drink cans on the way. It made me think of the cans and litteron the creek banks, river beds and waterholes I'd seen in Nth Qld. Shame on those disgusting people who throw litter from cars or leave it behind on road or riverside. It seems they exist all over the country.